Tag Archives: habits

Hope

sky-1107952_640According to C. R. Snyder, hope is the trilogy of goals, pathways and agency.

Brene Brown says, “Hope happens when we can set goals, have the tenacity and perseverance to pursue those goals, and believe in our own abilities to act.”  In other words we choose to say something, do something and be something.

Aristotle says, “To avoid criticism, say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.”

Lots of people who witness abuse choose this trilogy… Do nothing, say nothing, be invisible.

The Buddhist saying, “what we resist, persists” applies here as well. When we resist naming our hurts, when we resist new pathways out of the pain, when we resist claiming our agency… the old pains and stuckness of thought and deed will persist.

Snyder says that “hope is learned.”

If we did not learn hope in our families of origin we must teach it to ourselves as we age and mature. We must, it is not an option.

Brene Brown says, “We have to resist and unlearn old habits and the tendency to give up when things get tough.”

I know I have quoted everyone here, but they say it so much better than I ever could.

I would love to know:

What old habit or hurt do you need to unlearn in your life so you can teach yourself hope?

 

Love and light,
Indrani

Work is a verb…..

man_hands via salonThe definition of WORK is activity in which one exerts strength or faculties to do or perform something:  the labor, task, or duty that is one’s accustomed means of livelihood.

From my high school physics class, I remember that work is an expenditure of energy and that energy achieves something.

In everyday terms, the sun works with leaves for photosynthesis and the worms work makes soil worthwhile for planting.

I work at my non-profit so that I can help to change the world view on Domestic Violence.

When we decide to work, we have decided to be active.

Being active means being intentional about outcomes and outcomes require certain steps.

If you want to WORK at changing your habits…..say smoking, you have to CHOOSE to NOT smoke and get help in doing so. Help can be a gum, a patch, hypnosis, therapy or some other intervention. Nicotine is addictive so your brain needs help to help itself.

The whole point of deciding to WORK at something in hopes of changing it means to be intentional, active and present.

What “thing” in your life have you decided to change?

What help have you sought?

How active are you being?

Are you finding that it’s really easy to “fall off the wagon?”

OK, so get back ON the wagon.

If it’s worth doing, then it’s worth the time, toil and trouble.

The next time you feel like giving up, give yourself a breather and get RIGHT BACK TO WORK.

Love and light,

Indrani

Habitual habits…..

 

“We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.” J. Drydenold dirt via olddirt.wordpress

I am taking a class in Positive Psychology and my teacher, Tal, just allowed the wonderful quote above to escape!

I say escape because I felt that this quote freed me from something, but what?

As I write this, I do not know the answer to this question….and that’s okay. Actually it is more than ok. It is ok because NOW I KNOW that I will be actively searching my own life and behaviors to unearth what habits are “making me”.

I will use brushes that gently move the dirt and sand from an investigated habit, because using heavy machinery will only expose huge lumps of habits and not allow me to actually SEE what they are.

In plain language, I will not herald pompous proclamations that I will drastically change. I will whisper the change to myself and allow my mind, heart and intuition to guide me to the next place of excavation.
Let me give you a real life example.

In the past few weeks, I experienced a huge disappointment with someone close to me. I was not in a place where I could easily amend the situation. I was in a foreign country and did not have access to all that I needed to address what was happening. The only things I had were my heart, my mind, my intuition and my habits.

I now realize that I chose to investigate how I had habitually dealt with huge disappointments.

In the past, I would scream and yell, allow nasty words to escape from my mouth and make huge proclamations of what I would do in the future if this EVER happened again. I would let off steam that would quickly dissipate, but it left behind bad will and very hurt feelings. This time, I knew at some level that I did not want to act like this screaming heebeegeebee.

But what should I do? How should I act?

I tried for 24 hours to push it away…in other words, use heavy machinery and dredge the hurt out of me.

It did not work.
The next 24 hours, I saw the habit rear its ugly head and it wanted to charge full bore into the perpetrator…it wanted to destroy!

I witnessed all this happening in my body and I was shocked at the internal war that was going on. The habit did not want to give up…it was as though it had a mind of its own.

I cried a lot about it and in between the bouts of tears I kept asking, what is my lesson here?
What is my lesson here?
I did not receive any God-like voice telling me the lesson. I so very much wanted a definitive lesson that would allow my pain to dissipate.
My pain did not disappear.
I had to rise above my pain, rise above my tears, and find a solution while in the jaws of the disappointment.
It took me about 6 hours to arrive at a solution that I could live with, that would sustain my humanity and also allow the perpetrator to sustain theirs.

Some of the questions I had to answer while in pain were:

What are you here for?
Who are you here for?
Is this situation a deal breaker for your being here?
Do you respect all the players in this scenario?
Do you believe that people can make mistakes?
Will harping of someone’s faults help you to find a solution here?

As I allowed the answers to these and other questions to float into my consciousness, I felt the tears drying up and I began to focus on how to make the best of a really bad situation. I also reminded myself that no one died and no one had a brain tumor.

So I rose above the monster disappointment and I managed to participate at the event. I was not 100% myself, but I also had not allowed the habit of flying off the handle to derail me entirely.

How will you KNOW when the HABIT monster rears its massive head?
You will know because you will want to strike out, strike at and annihilate the person you are blaming.
That is when you have to RUN in the opposite direction. That is when you have to force yourself to step off of the bulldozer and pick up the littlest paint brush and take your time to uncover the layers of dirt and grime that have accumulated over the years.

This is when you have to be the best human you can be, all the while allowing your human emotions.
It takes patience and practice, but you have the time!
Time will be your friend if you let it!

 

Love & light,

Indrani